Nachhaltigkeit: Freund oder Feind der Autonomie?

Sustainability and environmental protection are sometimes discredited by being stylised as enemies of personal or social autonomy. The paper argues that this is a short-sighted and short-sighted view, and that sustainability should rather be seen as an enabling policy that secures the possibility of autonomy for the future. To this end, the paper first briefly explains what sustainability and autonomy are, and then use Hobbes' thought experiment of a state of nature to show the undesirable consequences of radical personal autonomy without self-commitment. From it will be deduced that meaningful autonomy goes hand in hand with self-commitment. A self-commitment to sustainability is, or so it is argued, unavoidable, in order to enable meaningful autonomous action for future generations.